the general burning of a city, or other considerable place.

This word is commonly applied to that grand period or catastrophe of our world, when the face of nature is to be changed by fire, as formerly it was by water. The ancient Pythagoreans, Platonists, Epicureans, and Stoics, appear to have had a notion of the conflagration: though whence they should derive it, unless from the sacred books, is difficult to conceive; except, perhaps, from the Phoenicians, who themselves had it from the Jews. Seneca says expressly, *Tempus advenit quo sidera sideribus incurrent, et omni flagrante materia uno igne, quicquid nunc ex deposito lucet, ardebit.* This general dissolution the Stoics call *exuperoic, epyrofisis.* Mention of the conflagration is also made in the books of the Sibyls, Sophocles, Hyginus, Ovid, Lucan, &c. Dr Burnet, after F. Tachard and others, relates that the Siamese believe that the earth will at last be parched up with heat; the mountains melted down; the earth's whole surface reduced to a level, and then consumed with fire. And the Bramins of Siam do not only hold that the world shall be destroyed by fire; but also that a new earth shall be made out of the cinders of the old.

Various are the sentiments of authors on the subject of the conflagration; the cause whence it is to arise, and the effects it is to produce. Divines ordinarily account for it metaphysically; and will have it take its rise from a miracle, as a fire from heaven. Philosophers contend for its being produced from natural causes; and will have it effected according to the laws of mechanics. Some think an eruption of the central fire sufficient for the purpose; and add, that this may be occasioned several ways, viz., either by having its intention increased; which again, may be effected either by being driven into less space by the encroachments of the superficial cold, or by an increase of the inflammability of the fuel wherein it is fed; or by having the resiliency of the imprisoning earth weakened; which may happen, either from the diminution of its matter, by the consumption of its central parts, or by weakening the cohesion of the constituent parts of the mass by the excess of the defect of moisture. Others look for the cause of the conflagration in the atmosphere; and suppose, that some of the meteors there engendered in unusual quantities, and exploded with unusual vehemence, from the concurrence of various circumstances, may effect it, without seeking any further. The astrologers account for it from a conjunction of all the planets in the sign Cancer; as the deluge, say they, was occasioned by their conjunction in Capricorn. Lastly, others have recourse to a still more effectual and flaming machine, and conclude the world is to undergo its conflagration from the near approach of a comet in its return from the sun.